Ascendancies (52 page)

Aino's brows rose. “Do you mean Flüüvins? Little blue animals with heads like big fat pillows?”

“Oh, you know them, then!”

“My
mother
read me Flüüvins! Why would Japanese want Flüüvins?”

“Well, the scam was—this old lady, she lives on this secluded island. Middle of the Baltic. Complete ass-end of nowhere. Old girl never married. No manager. No agent. Obviously not getting a dime off all this major Japanese action. Probably senile. So the plan is—I fly over to Finland. To these islands. Hunt her down. Cut a deal with her. Get her signature. Then, we sue.”

“I don't understand you.”

“She lives in the Åland Islands. Those islands are crucial to your people, and the Organizatsiya too. So you see the general convergence of interests here?”

Aino shook her green-braided head. “We have serious political and economic interests in the Ålands. Flüüvins are silly books for children.”

“What's ‘serious?' I'm talking plastic action figures! Cartoon drinking glasses. Kid-show theme songs. When a thing like this hits, it's major revenue. Factories churning round the clock in Shenzhen. Crates full of stuff into mall anchor-stores. Did you know that the ‘California Raisins' are worth more than the entire California raisin crop? That's a true fact!”

Aino was growing gloomy. “I hate raisins. Californians use slave ethnic labor and pesticides. Raisins are nasty little dead grapes.”

“I'm copacetic, but we're talking Japan here,” Starlitz insisted. “Higher per-capita than Marin County! The ruble's in the toilet now, but the yen is sky-high. We get a big shakedown settlement in yen, we launder it in rubles, and we clear major revenue completely off the books. That's serious as cancer.”

Aino lowered her voice. “I don't believe you. Why are you telling me such terrible lies? That's a very stupid cover story for an international spy!”

“You had to ask.” Starlitz shrugged.

They found the safehouse in Ypsallina. It was a duplex. The other half of the duplex was occupied by a gullible Finnish yuppie couple with workaholic schedules. Starlitz produced the keys. Aino went in, checked every room and every window with paranoid care, then went back to the Fiat and woke Raf.

Raf wobbled into the apartment, found the bathroom. He vomited with gusto, then turned on the shower. Aino brought in a pair of bulging blue nylon sports bags. There was no phone service, but Khoklov's people had thoughtfully left a clone-chipped cellular on the bedroom dresser.

Starlitz, who had been in the safehouse before, retrieved his laptop from the kitchen closet. It was Japanese portable with a keyboard the length of a cricket bat, a complex mess of ASCII, kanji, katakana, hiragana, and arcane function keys. It had a cellular modem.

Starlitz logged in to a Helsinki Internet service provider and checked the metal-band's website in Tokyo. Nothing much happening there. Sachiho was doing TV tabloid shows. Hukie had gone into production. Ako was in the studio for a solo album. Sayoko was pregnant. Again.

Starlitz tried his hotlist and found a new satellite JPEG file of developments on the ground in Bosnia. Starlitz was becoming very interested in Bosnia. He hadn't been there yet, but he could feel the lure increasing steadily. The Japanese scene was basically over. Once the real-estate bubble had busted, the glitz had run out of the Tokyo street-party and now the high yen was chasing the gaijin off. But Bosnia was clearly a very coming scene for the mid-90s. Not Bosnia per se (unless you were a merc, or crazy) but the surrounding safe-areas where the arms and narco people were setting up: Slovenia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Albania.

Practically every entity that Starlitz found of interest was involved in the Bosnian scene. UN. USA. NATO. European Union. Russian intelligence, Russia mafia (interlocking directorates there). Germans. Turks. Greeks. Ndrangheta. Camorra. Israelis. Saudis. Iranians. Moslem Brotherhood. An enormous gaggle of mercs. There was even a happening Serbian folk-metal scene where Serb chicks went gigging for hooting audiences of war criminals. It was cool the way the Yugoslav scene kept re-complicating. It was his kind of scene.

Raf emerged from the bathroom. He'd shaved and had caught his thinning wet hair in a ponytail clip. He wore his jeans; his waistline sagged but there was muscle in his hairy shoulders.

Raf unzipped one of the sports bags. He tunneled into a baggy black T-shirt.

Starlitz logged off.

Raf yawned. “Dramamine never works. Sorry.”

“No problem, Raf.”

Raf gazed around the apartment. The pupils of his dark eyes were two shrunken pinpoints. “Where's the girl?”

Starlitz shrugged. “Maybe she went out to cop some Chinese.”

Raf found his shades and a packet of Gauloises. Raf might have been Italian. The accent made this seem plausible. “The boot of the car,” he said. “Could you help?”

They hauled a big wrapped tarpaulin from the trunk of the Fiat and into the safe-house. Raf deftly untied the tarp and spread its contents across the chill linoleum of the kitchenette.

Rifles. Pistols. Ammo. Grenades. Plastique. Fuse wire. Detonator. Starlitz examined the arsenal skeptically. The hardware looked rather dated.

Raf deftly reassembled a stripped and greased AK-47. The rifle looked like it had been buried for several years, but buried by someone who knew how to bury weapons properly. Raf slotted the curved magazine and patted the tarnished wooden butt.

“Ever seen a Pancor Jackhammer?” asked Starlitz. “Modern gas-powered combat shotgun, all-plastic, bullpup design? Does four twelve-gauge rounds a second. The ammo drums double as landmines.”

Raf nodded. “Yes, I do the trade shows. But you know—as a practical matter—you have to
let people know
that you can kill them.”

“Yeah? Why is that?”

“Everyone knows the classic AK silhouette. You show civilians the AK—Raf brandished the rifle expertly—“they throw themselves on the floor. You bring in your modem plastic auto-shotgun, they think it's a vacuum cleaner.”

“I take your point.”

Raf lifted a bomb-clustered khaki webbing belt. “See these pineapples? Grenades like these, they have inferior killing radius, but they truly
look like grenades
. What was your name again, my friend?”

“Starlitz.”

“Starlet, you carry these pineapples on your belt into a bank or a hotel lobby, you will never have to use them. Because people
know
pineapples. Of course, when you
use
grenades, you don't want to use these silly things. You want these rifle-mounted BG-15s, with the rocket propellant.”

Starlitz examined the scraped and greasy rifle-grenades. The cylindrical explosive tubes looked very much like welding equipment, except for the stenciled military Cyrillic. “Those been kicking around a while?”

“The Basques swear by them. They work a charm against armored limos.”

“Basque. I hear that language is even weirder than Finnish.”

“You carry a gun, Starlet?”

“Not at the mo'.”

“Take one little gun,” said Raf generously. “Take that Makarov nine-millimeter. Nice combat handgun. Vintage Czech ammo. Very powerful.”

“Maybe later,” Starlitz said. “I might appropriate a key or so of that plastique. If you don't mind.”

Raf smiled. “Why?”

“It's really hard finding good Semtex since Havel shut down the factories,” Starlitz said moodily. “I might feel the need 'cause…I got this certain personal problem with video installations.”

“Have a cigarette,” said Raf sympathetically, shaking his pack. “I can see that you need one.”

“Thanks.” Starlitz lit a Gauloise. “Video's all over the place nowadays. Banks got videos…hotels got videos…groceries…cash machines…cop cars…Man, I
hate
video. I always hated video. Nowadays, video is really getting on my nerves.”

“It's panoptic surveillance,” said Raf. “It's the Spectacle.”

Starlitz blew smoke and grunted.

“We should discuss this matter further,” Raf said intently. “Work in the Struggle requires a solid theoretical grounding. Then you can focus this instinctive proletarian resentment into a coherent revolutionary response.” He began sawing through a wrapped brick of Semtex with a butterknife from the kitchen drawer.

Starlitz ripped the plastique to chunks and stuffed them into his baggy pockets.

The door opened. Aino had returned. She had a companion: a very tall and spectrally pale young Finn with an enormous cotton-candy wad of steely purple hair. He wore a pearl-buttoned cowboy shirt and leather jeans. A large gold ring pierced his nasal septum and hung over his upper lip.

“Who is this?” smiled Raf, swiftly tucking the Makarov into the back of his belt.

“This is Eero,” said Aino. “He programs. For the movement.”

Eero gazed at the floor with a diffident shrug. “Many people are better hackers than myself.” His eyes widened suddenly. “Oh. Nice guns!”

“This is our safehouse,” said Raf.

Eero nodded. The tip of his tongue stole out and played nervously with the dangling gold ring.

“Eero came quickly so we could get started at once,” Aino said. She looked at the greasy arsenal with mild disdain, the way one might look at a large set of unattractive wedding china. “Now where is the money?”

Starlitz and Raf exchanged glances.

“I think what Raf is trying to say,” said Starlitz gently, “is that traditionally you don't bring a contact to the safehouse. Safehouses are for storing weapons and sleeping. You meet contacts in open-air situations or public locales. It's just a standard way of doing business.”

Aino was wounded. “Eero's okay! We can trust him. Eero's in my sociology class.”

“I'm sure Eero is fine,” said Raf serenely.

“He brought a cell phone,” Starlitz said, glancing at the holster on Eero's chrome-studded leather belt. “Cops and spooks can track people's movements through mobile cellphones.”

“It's all right,” Raf said gallantly. “Eero is your friend, my dear, so we trust him. Next time we are a bit more careful with our operational technique. Okay?” Raf spread his hands, judiciously. “Comrade Eero, since you're here, take a little something. Have a grenade.”

“Truly?” said Eero, with a self-effacing smile. “Thank you.” He tried stuffing a pineapple, without success, into the tight leather pocket of his jeans.

“Where is the money?” Aino repeated.

Raf shook his head gently. “I'm sure Mister Starlet is not so foolish to bring so much cash to our first meeting.”

“The cash is at a dead drop,” Starlitz said. “That's a standard method of transferral. That way, if you're surveilled, the oppo can't make out your contacts.”

“The tactical teachings of good old Patrice Lumumba University,” said Raf cheerfully. “You were an alumnus, Starlet?”

“Nope,” said Starlitz. “Never was the Joe College type. But the Russian mob's chock-full of Lumumba grads.”

“I understand this money transfer tactic,” murmured Eero, swinging the grenade awkwardly at the end of one bony wrist. “It's like an anonymous remailer at an Internet site. Removing accountability.”

“Is the money in US dollars?” said Aino.

Raf pursed his lips. “We don't accept any so-called dollars that come from Russia, remember? Too much fresh ink.”

“It's in yen,” said Starlitz. “Three point two million US.”

Raf brightened. “Point two?”

“It was three mill when we finalized the deal, but the yen had another uptick. Consider it a little gift from our Tokyo contacts. Don't launder it all in one place.”

“That's good news,” said Aino, with a tender smile.

Starlitz turned to Eero. “Is that enough bread to get you and your friends set up in the Ålands with the networked Suns?”

Eero blinked limpidly. “The workstations have all arrived safely. No more problems in America with computer export restrictions. We could ship American computers straight to Russia if we liked.”

“That's swell. Any problem getting proper crypto?”

Eero picked at a purple wisp of hair with his free hand. “The Dutch have been most understanding.”

“Any problem leasing the bank building in the Ålands, then?”

“We bought the building. With money to spare. It was a cannery, but the Baltic has been driftnetted, so.…” Eero shrugged his bony shoulders. “It has a little Turkish restaurant next door. So the programmers have plenty of pilaf and shashlik. Finn programmers…we like our pilaf.”

“Pilaf!” Raf enthused, all jolliness. “I haven't had a decent pilaf since Beirut.”

Starlitz narrowed his eyes. “How about your personnel? Any problems there?”

Eero nodded. “We wish we had more people on the start-up, of course. Technical start-ups always want more people. Still, we have enough Finnish hackers to boot and run your banking system. We are mostly very young people, but if those Russian maths professors can login from Leningrad—sorry, Petersburg—then we should have no big problems. The Russian maths people, they were all unemployed unfortunately for them. But they are very good programmers, very solid skills. The only problem with our many young hackers from Finland.…” Eero absently switched the grenade from hand to hand. “Well, we are so very excited about the first true Internet money-laundry. We tried very hard not to talk, not to tell anyone what we are doing, but…well, we're so proud of the work.”

“Tell your mouse-jockeys to sit on the news a while longer,” Starlitz said.

“Really, it's too late,” Eero told him meekly.

Starlitz frowned. “Well, how many goddamn people have you Finn cowboys let in on this thing, for Christ's sake?”

“How many people read the alt newsgroups?” Eero said. “I don't have those figures, but there's alt.hack, alt.2600, alt.smash.the.state, alt fan blacknet.… Many.”